What happened to all of the young federal employees?

This column was originally published on Jeff Neal's blog, ChiefHRO.com, and was republished here with
permission
from
the author.

Photo courtesy of Jeff Neal

In 2009, there were 233,759 federal employees under age 30 - now there are
176,533.
In 2009, there were 224,775 employees age 60 and over. Now there are more than
268,000 and the number is growing. What happened? Why is the workforce getting
older? Should we even care? After all, older employees are often more experienced,
more stable in their careers, and likely to continue to work for a number of
years.

The problem the government is facing is that the number of younger employees is a
good indicator of the talent the government will have available for critical
mid-career jobs in the next 15-20 years. The lack of 30 and under talent means
we
will be facing significant shortfalls as current mid-career and older employees
retire.

We have seen this problem before. During the Clinton administration,
employees in human resources, procurement and other "control" jobs were
significantly downsized. Every chief human capital officer and chief procurement
officer I have talked with says they are still paying the price for those cuts.
When GS-14 and GS-15 jobs are advertised, the number of high quality candidates is
often inadequate. These are jobs where we used to see large numbers of excellent
applications. Now a handful of good candidates is considered to be a good result.

The current workforce demographics are shifting rapidly. When we look at federal
employment by age group, we see the number of under-30 employees is dropping
precipitously (from 11.4 percent of the workforce to 8.5 percent) and the number
of 60+ employees is growing (from 11 percent to 13 percent).

The rapid shift of the workforce profile
is significant and a bit shocking. While some of the change can obviously be
attributed to employees aging out of the 29 and under and 30-59 categories, but
that
doesn't explain everything. Why are things changing so quickly? Are younger
employees leaving faster than older ones? Is the government hiring fewer young
employees?

Turnover is Not the Problem

Some of these questions are easy to answer. Publicly available data show the
number of people leaving government and the numbers who are hired. What we see is
interesting - the raw number of young people leaving peaked in FY 2010 at 69,656,
and dropped to only 46,319 in FY 2013. The number of mid-career (age 30-59)
employees and the number of older employees leaving have increased. A higher
turnover rate among younger employees is to be expected.

Early in a career, more
employees change jobs than they do later in their careers. In almost every
occupation and in most employers, turnover is highest in the first two years of
employment. What these numbers tell me is that we do not have the extreme problems
with retention of younger workers that some argue we have.

Hiring is the Problem

Where we do see a clear problem is in hiring younger workers. Overall, hiring is
down across the board, but hires of young people have dropped far more than those
of mid-career and older workers. The number of new hires under age 30 has dropped
by 54.8 percent since FY 2009, while mid-career hiring has dropped 37.2 percent
and age 60+ hiring has dropped 24.4 percent.

It is clear that what is driving the number of younger
employees down is not turnover, it's hiring. The intake of younger employees has
dropped so much that, even though younger employees are actually quitting less
than they did five years ago, the new hires are not keeping up.

What is causing the hiring of young people to dry up? Three reasons stand out:

First is younger applicants' lack of interest in federal careers. In
recent years we have seen pay freezes, a partial government shutdown and almost
non-stop fed-bashing by the press and members of Congress. Someone just starting a
career is far less likely to choose an employer where they have difficulty getting
pay raises, are vilified by the press and senior government officials, and run the
risk of having their income cut off suddenly because of political fights in
Congress.

Second is agencies hiring filling fewer entry level jobs because of budget
cuts. An agency that can fill only a small percentage of its vacancies may elect
to fill them with more experienced new employees who can be productive
immediately. Until budgets stabilize, this problem is likely to persist.

Third is the lack of effective programs for hiring recent graduates. Two of
the hiring programs that target such applicants are the Pathways and Presidential
Management Fellows programs. A recent report by Jason Miller
of Federal News Radio
said neither program is meeting agency needs today. The Partnership for Public
Service 2014 Chief Human Capital Officers survey showed agencies are not
satisfied
with the Pathways program and 47 percent are not using it in a meaningful way.
Some argue
the program's public notice requirements are too onerous, while others say
agencies
simply have not adjusted to the program since it was deployed in 2012. Whatever
the reason, there does not appear to be a clear "pathway" to federal service for
recent graduates. That says nothing about the continuing challenges applicants of
all ages face in navigating the overly complex and slow federal hiring process.

The shift of the federal workforce to one that is much older is likely to reignite
talk of a pending retirement wave. Although previous predictions of retirement
doom proved to be unfounded, they were based upon projections of a workforce that
had hiring and turnover numbers closer to historical norms.

This rapid demographic
shift is unlike what we have seen in the past and it is safe to say no one knows
when current employees will retire. Societal trends are moving in the direction of
longer careers, both for lifestyle and economic reasons. That may mean the
workforce will continue to increasingly be populated with older workers.

If that
continues, we are likely to see a retirement bubble at some point in the future.
If the government develops a reputation as a workplace that is not hospitable to
recruiting younger applicants, we will likely see the trend accelerating for a few
years until something is done to proactively deal with it. Until that happens, we
should expect to see these trends continue.

Federal agencies will face a number of challenges as the workforce profile becomes
more titled toward older workers.

In my next post I am going to address the
consequences of these demographic shifts and what I believe the government must do
to adapt.

Jeff Neal is founder of the blog, ChiefHRO.com, and a senior vice president for ICF
International, where he leads the Organizational Research, Learning and
Performance practice. Before coming to ICF, Neal was the chief human capital
officer at the Department of Homeland Security and the chief human resources
officer at the Defense Logistics Agency.